CMP-My take

My take(finally!).

British India's Hindu-Muslim political rift was
first institutionalized when the British awarded Muslims separate
electorates in the 1909 Minto-Morley awards. Many refer to this
decision as the seed of Pakistan.

Later, in 1918, the Montagu
Chelmsford Report commented on separate communal electorates - "that
they perpetuated class division; that they stereotyped existing
relations; that they constituted 'a very serious hindrance to the
development of the self-governing principle'".

The Report also
said, "A minority which is given special representation owing to its
weak and backward state, is positively encouraged to settle down into a
feeling of satisfied security; it is under no inducement to educate and
qualify itself to make good the ground it has lost compared with the
stronger majority. On the other hand, the latter will be tempted to
feel that they have done all they need to do for their weaker fellow
countrymen and that they are free to use their power for their own
purposes. The give-and-take which is the essence of political life is
lacking. There is no inducement to one side to forbear, or to the other
to exert itself. The communal system stereotypes existing relations."

The
Report however said "much as we regret the necessity" the separate
electorate system must be maintained "even at the price of slower
progress towards the realization of a common citizenship." because "the
Muhammadans relied on past assurances which they regarded as vital to
their interests, and which the community as a whole protested must not
be withdrawn." [1][2]

After 1909, Muslim groups continued
demanding and getting from the British government communal safeguards
in the form of statutory quotas in legislatures and administration. One
of such awards was the Communal Award of 1932. The British granted to
Muslims safeguards such as -
1) statutory majorities with respect to minority
Hindus in legislatures of Muslim majority provinces, and in
Muslim-minority provinces, seats more than the Muslim proportion of
population
2) 25% share in administration
3) The right to communal representation in the Central and provincial
cabinets.
4) Creation of two more Muslim-majority provinces Sind and N.W.F.P

In
the Government of India Act 1935, the British government indirectly
granted the demand of Muslims that residuary powers be vested in the
provinces (not in the future Central Government which would have a
majority of Hindus), by vesting residuary powers with the Governor
General at his discretion.

Other safeguards included granting non-interference in
religious affairs (in common with other
religious communities). The Muslim Personal Law Act or the Shariat Act
was brought into force in 1937. BR Ambedkar comments on some of these
provisions in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India.[3]

By
1937-1939, after formation of elected provincial governments, Jinnah
decided that the Communal Award and all other awards were insufficient
and that parity for Muslims was the only meaningful safeguard. In 1940
Jinnah said "So far as I have understood Islam, it does not advocate a
democracy which would allow the majority of non-Muslims to decide the
fate of the Muslims"[4]. In 1940 he also spoke of how the Muslims
constituted not a mere minority, but a nation and must have their own
homeland[5].

BR. Ambedkar says of this period " In 1929, the
Muslims insisted that in allotting seats in Legislatures, a majority
shall not be reduced to a minority or equality. This principle,
enunciated by themselves, it is now demanded, shall be abandoned and a
majority shall be reduced to equality. The Muslims in 1929 admitted
that the other minorities required protection and that they must have
it in the same manner as the Muslims. The only distinction made between
the Muslims and other minorities was as to the extent of the
protection. The Muslims claimed a higher degree of protection than was
conceded to the other minorities on the ground of their political
importance. The necessity and adequacy of protection for the other
minorities the Muslims never denied. But with this new demand of 50 per
cent. the Muslims are not only seeking to reduce the Hindu majority to
a minority but they are also cutting into the political rights of the
other minorities." [3]

With the demand for parity, Muslim demands
for safeguards as a minority crossed the bounds of natural justice and
became undisguised power politics. Hindu-Muslim politics was now at the
point of no return and the British had either engineered or encouraged
this to happen. Despite Muslim League winning only four and a half
percent of the Muslim vote in 1937, Jinnah's claim to speak for the
entire Muslim community was accepted in 1939-40 by the British. who
wanted leverage against the Congress movement at a time when W.W.II had
begun and the Congress was refusing to cooperate in the war effort. [6]

In
1946, during the discussions with the Cabinet Mission, Jinnah made it
clear he wanted a sovereign Pakistan consisting of six provinces. If he
was to concede a Union between a virtually sovereign Pakistan and
Hindustan, it would be as a trial for 5 to 10 years and there must be
parity between Muslims and non Muslims, and between Hindu majority
provinces and Muslim majority provinces.

He was against
proportional representation in any future Union legislature or Union
government. He was opposed to the Union Centre having a legislature at
all and to the Union Centre having any executive or financial power
other than over those defence and foreign policy matters on which
federating units, Hindustan and Pakistan, could both agree upon.

The
Cabinet Mission Plan did not explicitly lay down the terms of parity
though it mentioned the limitation on the Union's powers. Instead it
aimed to help the Muslim League achieve both by the proposal that the
Indian Union be composed of A, B and C Sections with named provinces
compulsorily included in each. The Section Constituent Assemblies would
each write separate Section Constitutions before meeting in the Union
Constituent Assembly to decide the Union Constitution and what the
Union's structure and scope would be.

The compulsory grouping
scheme would give Jinnah the power to obtain all the concessions he
wanted from the Congress/Section A majority at Union level while
retaining the option of breaking off a sovereign Pakistan composed of
Sections B and C. His Pakistan would then have included most of
present-day Indian Punjab, Haryana (extending to the outskirts of
Delhi), sections of Himachal Pradesh, all of West Bengal and all of the
North-East.

The parity which Jinnah sought as safeguard was in
fact a Pakistani veto over Hindustanis of all religions/regions. Jinnah
perhaps felt that such a veto within an Indian Union would give more
power to Muslims of Muslim majority provinces than a separate sovereign
state, which was an option which he and the Muslim League clearly
stated they were not giving up even in their acceptance of the Cabinet
Mission Plan.

But the Congress, however powerful an organization
in itself, had no mandate to sign away the fundamental rights of those
Indians whom it claimed to represent and to hand Jinnah and the Muslim
League an artificial parity with Hindustan/India and a veto over its
affairs (and Congress's plans) for the sake of an illusory unity on the
League's terms. The Congress preferred to let the Muslim League have a
sovereign state with the non Muslim majority parts removed and to
receive its own sovereign state sans League interference.

In
short, Jinnah's acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan did not denote
his acceptance of a united India, it denoted his and the Muslim
League's opting for a larger Pakistan after the British left. The
Congress refusal to yield on the compulsory grouping scheme of the
Mission Plan was a rejection of a larger Pakistan at a later time and
rejection of a Pakistani veto over India and its constitution until
that time.

In the years preceding, Jinnah had been successful in
using his opposition to the Congress as leverage to get concessions
from the British and then leveraging his clout with the British to get
concessions from the Congress.[7] Jinnah believed that if his terms
were not agreed to by the Congress, this time too, his terms would be
forced on them by the British, as had happened before.

The
British Government and the Cabinet Mission broadly supported Jinnah's
claims for equality/parity and their (and the Muslim League's)
inflexibility on the compulsory groupings scheme/Sections followed from
that( Wavell said it was meant to deal with a 'psychological
difficulty'[8]).

The Cabinet Mission and later the British
Government refused to reconsider the compulsory groupings scheme in
spite of its long term un-sustainability, in spite of unrelenting
Congress opposition to it, and in spite of the fact that the scheme did
not take into account issues like Assam's non Muslim majority and the
sidelining of Sikh concerns. (It would be interesting to study if
similarly unsustainable constitutional contraptions were imposed by the
British on the Middle East, and lie at the root of some of the troubles
there.)

The British Government tried to pressurize the Congress
into accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan's compulsory grouping scheme
without any changes, including by attempting to postpone the meeting of
the Constituent Assembly whose first meeting finally took place in
December 1946.

But the British were not in fact, in a position to
impose any solution on the Congress. The British were also unwilling to
stay on in India until such a time as they could impose a
constitutional solution of their choice partly because of the steadily
deteriorating situation including communal riots, mutinies in the Armed
Forces and general civic breakdown.

So Jinnah was left protesting
Congress's refusal to accept the Cabinet Mission's terms to the letter.
He was left protesting the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. He was
left demanding that its very existence, the resolutions it passed and
activities towards writing a constitution be declared null and void by
the British. His pleas did not work because the British could do
nothing to stop the Congress from making progress on an Indian
Constitution which the country was awaiting in anticipation of full
independence after a long struggle.

It is interesting that Jinnah
did not call a Constituent Assembly sitting of his own with willing
Muslims Leaguers as participants and that he contented himself with
protesting what the Congress did. Today, 58 years later Pakistan is
still discussing what its constitution should be.

It is also
interesting that successive Pakistani leaders have projected imposed
parity between disparate and disproportionately sized population groups
or outright minority rule, as being key to the success of Pakistani
nationalism and governance. 'One man one vote' has been generally
considered much less relevant to the issue.

Having a sovereign
state Pakistan with full independence was, in my opinion, a better
option for a majority of Indian Muslims in preference to remaining a
minority within united India. But Pakistan's founding fathers were so
imbued with the politics of rancor against India that they failed to
realize that in giving up all say in India's affairs by becoming a
separate state and simultaneously choosing to foster enmity with India,
they willfully created a dangerous situation for Pakistan. The Kashmir
war served to set the seal on a future course of conflict.

Jinnah
might have expected the British to intercede in Pakistan's favor in the
Kashmir War. Pakistan's stance with respect to India has not changed
since the time Jinnah first offered up his usefulness to the British.
Pakistan still considers parity with India to be a basic requirement
for its security and expects the US, the successor power to the
British, to provide it such leverage. But the US is not in any better
position to do so than the British were, I think.

My concluding
(and starting) point is that Constitutional/political parity between
Hindus and Muslims, or between Hindustan and Pakistan as Jinnah
demanded as the price for a united India was an unsustainable option.
Even had every last four-anna Congress
member signed off on it, such parity would not have been digestible by
the general public and would have led to political chaos. As the forced
basis for collective decision making, it would have led to failure to
write a constitution for India.

Eventual civil war could also
have ensued since the British Indian Army was heavily weighted with the
North Western region's minority which was seeking to rein in the
political rights of the majority (similar to what happened in East
Pakistan in 1971).

Jinnah's demand that the Indian Army be first
split up on basis of a sovereign Pakistan and the two-nation theory and
then be reconstituted for a united India's defence was also unworkable
- as BR Ambedkar remarked([9]),
the two nation theory was a dangerous basis for a united Indian Army.

'Universal
franchise and joint electorates', a fundamental element of the
Congress's vision of nationalism would have had to compete with
'Parity', a fundamental element of Muslim League's vision of
nationalism, as the central nonnegotiable element of united Indian
nationalism.

Forced parity between the disproportionate
populations of Hindustan and Pakistan or forced parity between 25%
Muslims and 75% non Muslims would have led to collapse of the
Constitution after the first exercise of universal franchise brought
home to Indians the true significance of their individual sovereign
rights.

Without an emphasis on universal adult franchise, India
would have become a Pakistan, a state without a stable constitution or
effective functioning legislatures, ruled primarily as a military or
civilian dictatorship by a select group of oligarchs claiming sole
guardianship of the holy grail of nationalism with provinces having to
seek just rights for their citizens via bloody civil war.

History
was moving towards one-man one-vote and the political sovereignty of
the individual and Muslim League and Pakistan missed the bus. I am
thankful that the Congress had the good sense not to submit to the
Cabinet Mission Plan. It is solely and wholly due to the Congress that
my voting rights are not held hostage to the insecurities and
megalomania of Pakistani ruling elites. I am also grateful for the
opportunity to have a composite Indian identity (transcending a purely
religious/regional one) which resulted from Congress's efforts to
uphold inclusive nationalism, however imperfectly. But if any of my
Muslim fellow countrymen are unable to make similar categorical
statements, I do indeed understand.

Jinnah's and Congress's
world views were fundamentally opposed. Jinnah coming from a separate
electorate point of view felt that by seeking a mass base, by claiming
to represent all communities and by advocating joint electorates, the
Congress represented the Hindu majority effort to usurp the political
prerogative of Muslims and to subjugate the political Muslim identity
by poaching in political Muslim territory.

Jinnah's two-nation
theory formulation and refusal to agree to even a single Congress
Muslim member in the Central or provincial government were meant to
force Congress to abandon its attempts to represent ANY Muslim point of
view. He
succeeded to the extent that the preceding 50-odd years of the Indian
freedom struggle which the Congress spent attempting to construct a
composite nationalism and strategising, organizing or lying in jail
resisting the British, were reduced by Jinnah to being worth nothing
more than preventing Hindu-majority areas from going to Pakistan in
1946-47.

The only alternative the Congress had to such dismal
failure, was to agree to Jinnah's demands for Hindu-Muslim parity, to
abandon its Muslim supporters and henceforth continue to fail in the
following years until Pakistan finally decided to secede. In other
words, the Congress's attempt to practice mass politics which spanned
religious boundaries was a decisive failure.

This failure and the
1938 fiasco of its Muslim mass contact program [1o]) might explain Congress's strategy of courting reactionary Muslim
leaders and not the Muslim population base after independence.

Before
1937, Muslim politicians made sense (to me)- they were Indians who
wanted safeguards as Muslims against Hindu majority rule. After Jinnah,
the two nation theory formulation and demand for parity took
centre-stage after 1937-38, many Muslim politicians became Pakistanis
and stopped making sense. They became demagogues using religion to
rouse Muslims' ire against the whole world, the British, and most of
all Hindus with whom any compromise was equivalent to accepting slavery
and defeat. The mere implicit or explicit assertion of the Hindu
numerical majority or disagreement with League's/Jinnah's point of view
was deemed equivalent to harbouring an intention to wipe out a hundred
million Indian Muslims. 'La ilaha ilallah' became the eternal third
rail of subcontinental Muslim politics for which the Congress had and
still has no answer. (It appears to have no answer for the sloganeering
of Hindu demagogues either).

The question remains, after such
abysmal failure in the past, what lies in the future for mass-based
politics spanning religious boundaries in India.

Also, the proof
of the pudding is in the eating. If India is not able to assure its
citizens of any religion, community or region of the very basics of
security of life and property and equal opportunities for progress,
then all this history becomes moot[11].

Ref:
[1]'Speeches and Documents on the Indian Constitution 1921-47', Vol I
Selected by Maurice Gwyer and A. Appadorai 1957

[6] Durga Das wrote in 'India from
Curzon to Nehru and After', 1969, "The India Office and the Viceroy
were now agreed on building up Jinnah as their Crescent Card to
neutralise the Congress challenge. This was manifest from Sikander
Hayat Khan's disclosure to me that the Viceroy, on instructions from
the Secretary of State, had enjoined upon him and Fazlul Haque[of
Bengal] not to undermine Jinnah's position as "leader of the Muslim
community.". This happened towards the end of 1939, when Jinnah had
taken up an uncompromising attitude and the Muslim Premiers of Punjab
and Bengal were under pressure from some of their followers "to disown
Jinnah or cut him down to size.""

[7]These concessions from the
British included acceptance of Jinnah as sole spokesman of Muslims in
1939-40, granting of veto power over India's future constitutional
development by Viceroy Linlithgow in 1940, offers of parity in
Executive Council in 1945.

[8]Ayesha Jalal, Sole Spokesman-Jinnah, the Muslim League and
the Demand for Pakistan, pg193